Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

The Grand Duke turned inward after 1802, becoming more and more reclusive and eccentric. With 99% of his holdings swept away by the Napoleonic Wars, and the remaining tiny rump territory under French “protection,” Edjard IV began to obsess over those few things he could still control.

He instituted decrees to demolish any buildings that interfered with the strict line of sight and straight boulevards near his hold. His people were required first to count steps they took by twos, and then to always begin a journey with their right foot. Double locks were to be installed on all doors and checked five times daily.

Eventually, the Edjard IV’s obsessions found even stranger outlets. He began hoarding items in the ducal hold, chiefly hunks of quartz or granite. Citizens who turned in suitable stones were rewarded from the treasury, while those found to be in possession otherwise were executed–even if the stones were loadbearing members of a house.

The Ducal Guard were most directly affected, as by 1806 their livery had changed 19 times and their drill 103. Edjard was preoccupied with finding a uniform style and marching pattern that would, as he wrote, “cover every corner of the courtyard with every color.” Surviving depictions of the last, 1806, livery show a rainbow of brightly clashing diagonal stripes and saltires, and accounts from former Ducal Guards indicate that the garment took nearly an hour to don (with assistance) and was so bulky as to inhibit the very precision Edjard’s complex marches demanded.

It’s not surprising, then, that the Guard “found” the Grand Duke crushed beneath a pile of his own stones in December 1806. The local French commander, unsurprisingly, quietly arranged for the last ducal holdings to be annexed while pensioning off the remainder of the Guard.

The islanders, due to their isolation, had developed a pantheon quite distinct from their nearest neighbors and quite unlike anything else in Polynesia. Unfortunately, the last full-blooded islander had died in 1937 and social pressures had prevented the handing down of the traditional tales by any of his kinfolk.

An anthropologist had interviewed the islander, known as Georges, the year before he died and recorded the exchange on acetates. For better or worse, though, Georges was an inveterate prankster and Dr. Hewes was utterly credulous. So, while scholars agree that the resulting cosmology is a mixture of real stories passed down through generations and Georges having fun at the expense of his guest, no one is sure which is which.

Roakoanton, the god of fire embers raked in a counterclockwise direction, is probably made up. Likewise Koantuatuana, who Georges claimed was a powerful goddess that only aided women who had lost great-uncles to shark attacks. But what of Rotpota, said to be the essential god of outrigger canoe lashings? Or Koatpotaea, a spirit Georges said carefully controlled the islanders’ shellfish harvest in line with her own inscrutable motives?

No wonder, then, that relatives say that when Georges died–shortly after the first copies of Hewes’ book reached him–he died laughing.

This post is part of the February 2012 Blog Chain at Absolute Write. This month’s prompt is “second chances.”

I had prepared very carefully, from packing everything days in advance to dropping the dog off at the kennel early to renting a car to get me to the airport as well as run those last few crucial errands. I even bought an extra waterproof camera the night before I left, remembering that I’d used up all my shots early last year.

Yet as I got up at 4am to be at the airport bright and early for my 7am flight, I had a vague feeling that I was forgetting something. It wasn’t until I was at the airport, staring at the electronic ticket kiosk, that the circuit finally closed.

My passport was sitting in a drawer at home, 90 minutes away.

I was trying to board an international flight.

People who work the ticket counters must get a lot of sob stories (even if most probably come from people trying to avoid paying a $25 baggage charge). I think the fact that I was trembling uncontrollably from sheer overwhelming stress did a lot to lend credence to my tale of woe. As my house was a 120-minute round trip away, and I had an hour until boarding, you can probably see where I was coming from there.

I hoped that the Dominican Republic might be like Mexico at El Paso in 2000, when all I needed was a driver’s license–but no, not in this age of international shoe and underwear bombs. The lady at the counter instead booked me for the second and final flight from the USA to Punta Cana, which left from Philadelphia at 10pm.

“I’m shocked that there’s another flight,” I said, with no small measure of relief.

“I’m as surprised as you are,” she said. “You have three and a half hours to get back here with your passport.”

Lucky for me I’d chosen to rent a car instead of taking a taxi–I really would have been out of luck then. Even if I’d been able to hire another ride, I doubt that any taxi driver would have been willing to violate the speed limit as flagrantly as I did on my way home. The trip usually takes 90 minutes one way; I did a round trip in nearly the same amount of time. I actually only missed my original flight by about a half-hour.

I introduced myself to the baggage handler as “the unfortunate with a tale of woe” as she reflected how quick my passage had been. The gate agent had changed shifts, with the matronly and helpful agent who rebooked my flight replaced with a male agent more or less my own age.

“You’re lucky she did that for you,” he sneered as my itinerary printed. “Normally, ‘I forgot my passport’ isn’t an excuse for waiving a rebooking fee.” I was able to make it to the gate without injuring him, an action which I believe qualifies me for a Nobel.

That aside, I wasn’t out of the woods yet. Bizarrely, my path took me further away from the Dominican Republic–first to Charlotte and then to Philly. Each connection was super-tight, less than 45 minutes from arrival to boarding. A delay of any kind would have stranded me overnight.

Amazingly, both flights were not only on time, they were early. 30 minutes early, both of them, a feat probably never equaled before or since in this age of delays and just-in-time arrivals. I had enough time to buy lunch and dinner and keep my family up to date on my progress via text.

Whoever scheduled the USA-Punta Cana flights clearly did so under the influence of powerful narcotics. There were two a day: one from Charlotte arriving around 5, and one from Philly rolling in around 10pm, long after the airport had basically shut down. When my flight landed (also 30 minutes early!) my tour company had long packed it in. The only fluent English speaker I could find (other than my fellow passengers) was a German expat working for another tour company who confirmed that a $70 taxi ride to my resort was the only option.

I split the ride part of the way with a couple from Connecticut (interestingly both academics, like me) but once they were dropped off at their rented Punta Cana townhouse it was just me and the driver with only my high school Spanish and his handful of phrases between us. I was, understandably, a bit nervous.

It didn’t help that he clearly had no idea where the resort was. We stopped three times for directions–a gas station, the Connecticut townhouse, and a police post–and most of the route looked to be raw, howling wilderness. I felt like I was being driven to the ends of the earth, and it was all I could do to maintain a cheery facade by tapping my bag along with the Caribbean beat in the van’s speakers.

Needless to say, I was so relieved when my resort appeared that I paid the asking fare, $80, without even haggling. The driver attempted to negotiate an airport return in a week, but I left him at the front desk while I went to my room, where my brother was already checked in, and basically collapsed.

But you know what? Aside from my slip, which I attribute to lack of sleep more so than anything, I was extraordinarily lucky. I got a second chance at my long-awaited tropical paradise vacation with my family, and I seized it. The rest of the week seemed like a beautiful waking dream, made all the sweeter by the fact that I almost missed it.

Check out this month’s other bloggers, all of whom have posted or will post their own responses:
Turndog-Millionaire
Ralph Pines
magicmint
Tomspy77
MamaStrong
in_one
LilGreenBookworm
Literateparakeet
Diana Rajchel
sambgood
Bogna
writingismypassion
kiwiviktor81
AFord
randi.lee
Areteus
Domoviye
pyrosama

“You remember crazy old Mrs. Smiley?”

“Oh, how could I forget her? Total name-personality mismatch. She used to scream at us if we ever got near those shrubs of hers. Remember how we used to see her out there trimming them with scissors?”

“Well, she came up in my docket today. Her family is trying to get her committed so they can seize her assets.”

“That’s…that’s kind of terrible actually. She was a mean old coot but she never hurt anybody. What’s their reasoning?”

“According to the affadavit, she swears that her hedgerow is the above-ground portion of a sentient and dangerous plant being she calls Bramblebraid, and by grooming it and keeping others away she is protecting the entire street from its depredations.”

Tellytaxt Gallery, 115 E. Main, 11:47am.

“Tellytaxt? What’s that mean–name of the founder?”

“Oh no, heavens no. The gallery was founded by Emile Delecroix and Pierre Richat in 1948. They came up with the name as a nonce word that was free of overt philological baggage.”

“Doesn’t sound baggage-free to me. What would you say, Smitty? A tax on limey televisions?”

“A text on Telly Savalas.”

“Maybe a jelly used in taxidermy.”

“That’s quite enough, officers. Do you want to see the break-in, or are you content to play your childish games with concepts you don’t fully grasp?”

The world, all its creatures and aspects, began in a deep sleep.

Some say that the world had been brought forth by a powerful Shaper. Saddened by the actions of its creations, the Shaper had put them to sleep and withdrawn from the spheres of mortal ken.

Others maintain that the world has always been, and that it periodically falls into cycles of sleep and wakefulness. The sleep at the dawn of memory was therefore only the latest in a neverending cycle.

Still others claim that the sleep was an illusion, and that rather than waking the world was created. That doesn’t fully explain the actions of the Wakeful One, of course, but each of the theories has their own weaknesses.

What is clear–part of the collective memory of every living and unliving thing in the world–is that the Wakeful One was the first to rise, and that through toil and hardship on its part the rest of the world was awakened and made lively once more. It was with great sorrow that, at the end of its adventures, the Wakeful One revealed that eventually there would be another sleep. As a counterbalance to the wakefulness it had brought into the world, the Wakeful One would return to set the sleep in motion once more.

“Here,” the Klrkrr guard clicked, “swallow this.” The medallion around its neck translated its chittering into words that mammals like Jo could understand, but did little to explain the small white wriggling worm being thrust at her.

“I’m…sorry?” Jo said. “You want me to eat this?”

“Not eat!” The guard’s agitated clicking was translated into mammalian yelling. “Swallow! Chew on it and you will answer to me!”

Jo picked up the worm and looked helplessly at Mar.

“It’s a larva toll,” Mar said. “Klrkrr larvae need to gestate in a living host after hatching. Don’t worry; it’ll settle in your stomach or bowels and eat some of your food and suck a little of your blood. Nothing serious.”

“And then burst out of me when it’s ready to pupate!” Jo gagged.

“Oh no. They’ll remove it when you leave their lands and transfer it to some livestock. Serves to get the little ones off to a good start and simultaneously limit the amount of time you spend in Klrkrrdrwn.”

“He wasn’t superstitious, so in the battle for the fairgrounds his unit sent him in to flush snipers out of a house of mirrors. Did it with an antitank mine and shattered every pane of glass for a thousand yards in every direction. 3,381 years of bad luck in one go. Place got bombed to hell not long afterward, so there’s no chance of going back to grind the mirrors up to reverse the curse.”

“That seems a little harsh, don’t you think? It’s like when someone is sentenced to 500 years in prison–why not just say ‘for the rest of their life?'”

“Well, for one thing, the Major believes in reincarnation. Unless he comes back as a redwood or a Galapagos tortoise, there’s an awful lot of lifetimes between himself and the end of his bad luck run.”

Business was lousy, especially at night. College towns tended to be overloaded with tanning salons, and most of the students tended to use ones that were within staggering distance of campus rather.

With no customers, and no supervisor, Maggie and Rae took their smoke breaks frequently and just outside the salon under the protective awning of the mini-mall and the harsh glow of neon signs.

A lone pedestrian cut through the parking lot, probably walking from the nearby apartments to the Chinese buffet just down the road.

“Hey!” Maggie called. “You need to tan?”

“Does this look like it tans?” the pedestrian said, flashing a dead-fish white forearm. “The sun never shines in Ireland, so we never evolved that ability!”